Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Friday November 25 2016, @01:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the make-foreigners-pay dept.

Patients could be forced to show their passports before being granted NHS [UK's National Health Service] care as part of a bid to crack down on foreign visitors, a senior official has said.

The Department of Health is examining whether patients should have to show two forms of ID to get some elements of NHS care, saying this was "controversial" but already happening in some places.

Chris Wormald, the most senior civil servant at the Department of Health, said in a hearing at the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that the NHS has a "lot further to go" when it comes to reclaiming money from foreign visitors.

[...] "Now it is obviously quite a controversial thing to do to say to the entire population you now have to prove identity."

[...] But PAC chairwoman Meg Hillier expressed concern about British residents that don't have photo ID and those who would struggle to find a utility bill.

"I have constituents who have no photo IDs," she said.

"Because they have never travelled they have no passport, they have no driver's licence because they have never driven, they still live at home because they can't afford to move out so they've never had a utility bill in their name.

"(They are) perfectly entitled to health care - British born, British resident - how are you going to make sure that people have access easily to the National Health Service without having to go through a very humiliating and impossible to meet set of demands?"

Source: The Independent


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1) by garrulus on Friday November 25 2016, @02:42PM

    by garrulus (6051) on Friday November 25 2016, @02:42PM (#432849)

    GO HOME.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday November 25 2016, @03:43PM

    by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Friday November 25 2016, @03:43PM (#432862) Journal

    >:And whats wrong about this?

    You want the list? OK, here we go:

    1 - It complicates healthcare provision. Do you really want to be fishing around in your pocket for ID in order to get your arms sewn back on? What if you don't happen to have your passport on you the day you get savaged by a rabid badger?
    2 - It will inevitably deny healthcare to legitimate users: As described elsethread, plenty of British people would have trouble providing a satisfactory level of ID. Of course this might be deliberate, to generate demand for a national ID card.
    3 - People determined to abuse the system will find a way round it anyway. This leads to an escalating arms-race of byzantine methods of screening vs illegal workarounds to the point where legitimate users can't access the system at all. For an example, try claiming working tax credit or disability benefit, I dare you. You'll be gouging your eyes out with a biro within a fortnight.
    4 - It turns doctors and nurses into immigration officials. If you can't perceive a problem with that, I suggest you visit an NHS doctor today and get your brain checked.
    5 - It introduces an expensive and inefficient layer of bureaucracy into a system that really doesn't need it. Eventually the cost of the nationality-checking will equal or exceed the cost of the problem it attempts to (and fails) to solve.
    6 - All of this doesn't actually address any particularly significant problem. Healthcare tourism is a minute fraction of the NHS' budget. There are far better things the government could be spending their time and our money on.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 25 2016, @03:54PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 25 2016, @03:54PM (#432866)

      Silly rabbit. Healthcare is not for patients. Its for bureaucrats, politicians, demagoguery and lucrative service contracts.
      Also, roools!! Following rules is more important than doing work.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 25 2016, @03:55PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 25 2016, @03:55PM (#432867)

      But but his rage boner!?!? How else can he push back against those filthy illegals that took his jeerrb???

    • (Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday November 25 2016, @03:56PM

      by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Friday November 25 2016, @03:56PM (#432868) Journal

      Almost forgot:

      7 - If people (whether illegal immigrants, legal immigrants or legitimate UK nationals without the necessary documentation) become nervous about visiting the doctor for fear of being deported, then they will stop going to the doctor. That will not only result in the direct suffering of those people and their families and their caregivers and their employers and the economy, but it could also lead to some serious fucking health problems on a national scale. What if people stop taking their kids for vaccinations for fear of deportation? I think we've talked enough on this forum about the dangers non-vaccination. And don't get me started on STDs. We have enough trouble as it is trying to keep a lid on that shit. You want an AIDS epidemic because people are too scared to get anti-virals, or even to get diagnosed?

      Money nvested in healthcare pays ofr itself.

      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday November 25 2016, @05:45PM

        by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Friday November 25 2016, @05:45PM (#432916) Homepage

        " If people (whether illegal immigrants, legal immigrants or legitimate UK nationals without the necessary documentation) become nervous about visiting the doctor for fear of being deported, then they will stop going to the doctor. "

        I see what you did there. You conflated illegals with legals or legitimate UK nationals with regard to fear of being deported. If illegals have to refuse healthcare and suffer ill effects or be deported, then good. They made the choice to break the law, and they should have known from first principles that if their very existence in that country depends on breaking the law, then they should be prepared to suffer any ill effects as a result of their bad decisions. Are those laws just? Maybe, maybe not, but they rolled the dice and they should be vigilant about consequences.

        Even worse, they are so selfish as to open up their offspring and families to such ill effects. Regardless of what you believe, illegal immigrants are not the best and brightest, they are not doctors, lawyers, and engineers. What they are are unskilled leeches unwilling to immigrate, who demand to be treated like Pashas while contributing absolutely nothing. They are parasites, they are scum. They refuse to integrate and form violent ghettos and attack the very society and values which have shown them mercy.

        They should not be deported, but either put to work in camps in exchange for 3 hots and a cot (to be fair, also given the opportunity to integrate and prove their willingness to work over a period of years, able to eventually earn citizenship and be set free in this manner) or executed.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 25 2016, @06:30PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 25 2016, @06:30PM (#432944)

          None of what you wrote is a rebuttal to the fact that even illegal immigrants are part of society and their illness is our illness. Herd immunity requires everyone, regardless of legal status, to be vaccinated.

          • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday November 25 2016, @07:06PM

            by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Friday November 25 2016, @07:06PM (#432962) Homepage

            Illegals bring in all kinds of exciting exotic diseases which would otherwise not be there -- like whooping cough, drug-resistant tuberculosis, Leprosy, Dengue Fever, to name a few!

            You sound like one of those liberal White girls with an upper middle-class upbringing who graduates from Womens' Studies and goes to Haiti to sleep with the natives.

            Your herpes is everybody's herpes!

            • (Score: 2) by turgid on Friday November 25 2016, @07:40PM

              by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 25 2016, @07:40PM (#432978) Journal

              Nigel Farage said that foreigners bring AIDS into the country, and in doing so put a burden on the NHS. He said this during the Brexit referendum campaign.

            • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 25 2016, @08:49PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 25 2016, @08:49PM (#432992)

              > Illegals bring in all kinds of exciting exotic diseases which would otherwise not be there

              As if no tourist has ever brought an infection with them into the country.

              But regardless of how the disease got there, refusing to treat it only makes it spread.

              > You sound like one of those liberal White girls

              MD actually. You, on the other hand, sound like a right cunt.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 25 2016, @11:38PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 25 2016, @11:38PM (#433030)

              Illegals bring in all kinds of exciting exotic diseases which would otherwise not be there -- like whooping cough, drug-resistant tuberculosis, Leprosy, Dengue Fever, to name a few!

              Drug resistant bacteria would exist regardless of immigration.

              • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday November 26 2016, @12:15AM

                by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday November 26 2016, @12:15AM (#433046) Homepage

                Being an asshole would exist regardless of altruism. Let's not only tolerate it, but accept it into society!

                • (Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 26 2016, @03:50AM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 26 2016, @03:50AM (#433103)

                  You are still allowed to post, so looks like we are accepting assholes into our society.

        • (Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday November 28 2016, @11:16AM

          by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Monday November 28 2016, @11:16AM (#433982) Journal

          > I see what you did there. You conflated illegals with legals or legitimate UK nationals with regard to fear of being deported.

          I see what you did there. In your rush to froth about the evil dirty foreigners, you deliberately dodged the entire point of the thread, story and summary, and made the erroneous and simplistic assumption that this half-arsed, half-witted abortion of a proposed scheme will in any way be effective at sifting illegal immigrants from legal immigrants, legal foreign residents or even fully legal UK-born citizens. If young Mohammed is of Iraqi descent but UK born and bred and a full UK citizen, but happens to have a bit of an accent and no passport, in today's political climate I'd fully understand why he might be nervous of an immigration check at the hospital. All you need is one vindictive, racist turd of a jobsworth on the hospital's front desk and suddenly Mo is on the next flight to Baghdad, or at the very least facing accusations from the home office leading to months or years of unnecessary and uncompensated paperwork, harassment and stress attempting to prove a negative to the uncaring, grinding, bureaucratic machinery of the government. A few cases like that and suddenly a quarter of the population of Bradford is avoiding the NHS, suffering and dying of treatable illnesses, incubating transmissible disease and trying to have babies at home without any modern healthcare. Is that really a price worth paying just for one more chance to put the boot into the illegals?

          You also completely fail to take in the central point of the post you reply to which is that, as much as you may like to ignore the fact, illegal immigrants are still human beings. Diseases they harbour can infect the rest of us, so treating those diseases reduces disease infection rates. It is in fact entirely possible to justify universal, non-discriminatory healthcare purely in terms of economic self-interest, without any need to appeal to your non-existent senses of "mercy", "altruism" or "basic humanity".

    • (Score: 2) by Webweasel on Friday November 25 2016, @10:28PM

      by Webweasel (567) on Friday November 25 2016, @10:28PM (#433017) Homepage Journal

      3 - People determined to abuse the system will find a way round it anyway. This leads to an escalating arms-race of byzantine methods of screening vs illegal workarounds to the point where legitimate users can't access the system at all. For an example, try claiming working tax credit or disability benefit, I dare you. You'll be gouging your eyes out with a biro within a fortnight.

      Beyond true. About 8 years ago I was in the child tax credits scheme. I'm a single dad with 2 kids and back then their child care was paid by the state. Until the day I got a letter saying I didn't have any kids and I owed the gov £25k in child tax credits.

      The "system" could not deal with a complaint about this. I could only post an appeal to be reviewed in 3 months, all of the time not having £1500 a month to pay for child care, that I would normally get (praise be to some of the things the Blair gov did).

      I had to use my "skillz" to track down the home phone number of the director of the tax credits system and talk to his wife to get the situation sorted.

      One hell of a week that was.

      --
      Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956